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Ocean pollution targeted with $2 million plastic redesign prize

Creators of innovative ways to keep plastics out of the ocean have been given a $2 million incentive by a new prize launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit.

Plastics that are not captured by recycling are often littered or leak out of the waste stream into the environment

Photo: Richard Carey

The New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize will call on entrants to come up with innovative ways to redesign plastic packaging to make it more recyclable, thus preventing it from entering the ocean in the first place.

With demand for plastics expected to double in the next 20 years and plastic waste costing the global economy $80-120 billion a year, the need for innovation is all the more pressing.

Millions of tonnes of plastic enter the marine environment every year, and just this week researchers from the University of Tasmania and the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds found a tiny uninhabited and untouched island in the South Pacific polluted by 17.6 tonnes of plastic.

The researchers found nearly 38 million pieces of plastic that had been deposited by ocean currents on the 3,700-hectare Henderson Island in the Pitcairn Islands, featuring waste produced in Europe, Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere across the globe. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday (15 May), found crabs and other animals caught in the plastic debris, with about 13,000 new items washing up on the island daily.

Speaking about the Prize, Dame Ellen MacArthur, the founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, explained: "After 40 years of effort, globally only 14 per cent of plastic packaging is collected for recycling, with one third escaping collection and ending up in the environment. If we want to change this, we must fundamentally rethink the way we make and use plastics.”

There is so much plastic on Henderson Island that crabs have begun using bits of packaging as shelters

Photo: Jennifer Lavers

Prize entrants will compete for up to $2 million in grants and the winners, who will be decided later this year by a panel of senior business executives, acclaimed scientists, designers and academics, will be entered into a 12-month accelerator programme where they will receive expert advice and commercial guidance, feedback on user and scalability requirements and access to laboratories for testing and development.

The prize will be split into two parallel challenges:

The $1 million Circular Design Challenge asks participants to come up with ways of getting products to consumers without generating plastic waste, focusing on small-format packaging like straws or plastic sachets (the focus of a global Unilever project), which are almost always thrown away without being recycled. The challenge is open to anyone with an idea of how to get products to people without plastic waste or anyone who has a design for recyclable plastic packaging.

The $1 million Circular Materials Challenge asks innovators to come up with ways to make all plastic packaging recyclable. It specifically targets alternatives to multi-layer composition packaging for things like crisp packets, which keep food fresh but are hard to recycle. The challenge is open to anyone with an idea for alternatives that could be composted or recycled.

It has also been supported by former US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has provided a video address commenting that “focusing on ocean health, focusing on an initiative to save the oceans, could not be more timely, and it could not be more critical”.

“We must fundamentally rethink the way we make and use plastics”

“We need better materials, clever product designs and circular business models,” says MacAthur. “That’s why we are launching the New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize, calling for innovators, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs to help create a plastics system that works.”

Lead Philanthropic Partner Wendy Schmidt, meanwhile, added: “Working towards circularity in the way we make, use, and distribute plastic packaging will revolutionise the scale of the human footprint on our planet, hugely reducing plastic waste and its devastating impact on ocean health.

“The value of keeping materials in the economy is massive compared to the losses we suffer when plastic leaks into the very living systems we depend upon for our survival. The New Plastics Economy Prize is a call for creative design and technical innovation at a critical time.”

Several other high-profile projects have been launched in recent years, including the Ocean Cleanup, which aims to use floating barriers to collect plastic floating in the ocean around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with deployment scheduled for the end of 2017.

A plastics economy based on a circular economy approach could ‘transform’ the plastics industry and ‘drastically reduce’ its environmental impact, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

San Francisco-based artist Von Wong decided to do something about plastic pollution by making it ‘extravagant, unique and different’ through the addition of a mermaid. He shared some of his images and the stories behind them with us.

Related

A campaign has been launched for the UN to recognise a large area of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean as an official country, with former US Vice President Al Gore becoming the first honorary citizen of ‘the Trash Isles.’

The government is to introduce legislation to ban the sale and manufacture of plastic microbeads in cosmetic products from 2018, as new Environment Secretary Michael Gove pledges greater action on ocean plastics.

With at least 150 million tonnes of the plastic already polluting our seas, it’s clear something must be done. They may only be a drop in the ocean, but here are some companies creating products from ocean waste.